Clear as the night sky
by Settely
Summary: Erik has always been a sad, broken man who hoped for more than he could ever have.
1. Dreaming

_**Nemo est casu bonus**_

_Nobody is good by chance _(Seneka)

Charles' lips are as red as wine. It is funny to see him so relaxed, sprawled naked on silken covers. The room is dark, a solitary lamp giving only so much light as not to fall over any pieces of furniture. A blush creeps its way up the milky skin of his throat as fine outlines of a collarbone and cheekbones are underlined with a shadow or two.

There is nervousness and some kind of sadness hidden behind Charles' inviting smile but what shines out the most is acceptance. Raw acceptance of Erik as a person, as a mutant, as a...

Man. Man who just fell in love with another man.

It is hard to believe at first, to be honest. He remembers the cryptic meaning of pink triangles pressed here and there on the clothing of people he had to dispose of, had to forget the disfigured faces of, had to remember to breathe after touching with his hands ready to spit out his own protruding bones. The shame when he saw men cry in each other's shoulders when the walls of barbed wire fell, the jostling all around him. The silence.

"I haven't dared to hope for as much." Erik props himself at the doorframe, his voice strained.

"Really, my friend." Charles blinks lazily back at him, combing an elegant hand through his tousled hair. His lips quiver, their redness only seeming to grow. "You ought to have more faith from now on."

"Why?" Is all Erik utters back, closing the door carefully. His gaze softens and his arms uncross as he comes closer, deciding to sit in the feet of the bed. "I thought, I..."

Charles is looking at him with an unwavering gaze, his eyes seeming to mist over in thought for a moment. "You were never a stranger to me, Erik. You ought to have known that already." He starts to laugh then, the sound eerily resonating within the suddenly cold room. "Look at what you have done to me!" Charles whizzes then, his whole body convulsing in a sob. "_Look at me!_" His voice breaks as he throws the covers away, the movement causing a nearby vase to fall and shatter into million pieces on the floor.

His legs… There are no legs, nothing that could actually resemble them. There are naked bones there, twisted and pale, with shreds of muscles attached here and there, greenish swollen veins hanging onto them like matted poison ivy. His hips are swollen, their joints as if broken, rendering the lower half of his body completely useless.

Erik looks on shocked, frozen in place, unable either to move, or tear his eyes away. "I didn't do it." He whispers, feeling bile rise high in his throat. "I did- I did not do it." World falls into smudges as Erik tries to move away, tries to grasp at the frame of the bed. It almost feels as if he was drowning. He can't breathe deep enough to think clearly. "No, no-, Charles, _NO_, I did not-"

Charles' face is blank. "Wer würde dich eingeintlich lieben?" His words sound hysterical but his eyes are closed as he lies down on the bed. His face contorts, an ugly grimace twisting his features, his next words spat viciously, "RAUS, du dumme jüdisches Kind, _raus_, sage ich!"

"Charles." Erik rasps, clutching his own fingers till they feel ready to snap him out of the sudden stupor. "Char-"

"MAMA!"

"Du bist ein Jude, was machst du hier?"

"Cicho, nie płacz, nie płacz, _ciiii_-"

"Komme raus. Komme raus diese Sekunde, Jude."

**"MAMA!"**

"Ihr habt dafür gearbeitet gehabt- "

_"TATO!"_

"Nur ohne euch hätte Deutschland eine Zukunft!"

"Nie, nie-, Nie, proszę nie..."

"Schmutzige Schweine wollen Alles nur für sich selbst haben."

**"TATO!**_**MAMO!"**_

"**RAUS**!"

"_No,_we do _not_, my friend."

His head is pounding when he wakes up.


	2. Awake

"Nie!" Erik whispers, staring at the ceiling with unblinking eyes. The lamp in the middle of it looks like a broken candelabra, buzzing with the noise of a cheap electric bulb inside. "Nie." He repeats louder, nursing the bottle closer to his lips, spilling some of the vodka down the front of his shirt.

The world spins when he tries to get up, his head splitting itself in two. A sudden wave of nausea makes him bring a hand across his lips reflexively, nostrils flaring.

He sees her standing by the window then, her back almost fluorescent. Her skin is pinkish and freckled, as if glowing with an inner light. Her hair is long, dark locks spilling down one of the shoulders, caressing the outline of her clothed breast. Her face is obscured from the view however, hidden in the shadow of a nearby curtain.

"Mamo." He rasps, extending a hand towards her. His whole arm shakes when he calls out to her, her silhouette unmoving in the distance. "Mamo-" She seems so close and yet so far away, a few steps from the bed, a few hundred miles to cross.

Her perfume is strong, going in waves off of her as her stilettos click on the wooden panels, her hips moving like a pendulum as she nears his line of sight. "You've had another nightmare." Her eyes shimmer when the dark waves dissolve into a flair of red, as the skin loses its rosiness and her body reveals its taunt muscles. "It's me, Mystique."

She sits in the feet of the bed, close enough for Erik to see her fake eyelashes peel off but far enough not to be able to touch.

The room feels stuffy, the air barely moving. Erik drinks till the burning in his throat subdues and his head begins to swim lazily between consciousness and dreaming. The street lanterns cast a pool of dimmed light over the middle of the floor, the rest dark and devoid of life.

He drinks into the sight of her, the delicate afterglow from the window on her skin, the rough touch of her fingertips on his when he hands her the bottle, the movement of her throat as she takes a mouthful of the vodka, the frown as the liquid burns the back of her throat. Her hand hovers over his for a moment before she seems to remember herself and retracts it hastily, putting the alcohol away.

She grasps both of her hands, the edges of her fingers lightning up for a moment to change from their natural blue to a pair of sinewy ones. She looks comically with masculine palms attached to her slender wrists but Erik just stares stunned at the view, something inside of him twisting itself in a knot. "Why would you do this?"  
She ignores him, looking her new hands over, grimacing at the shape of fingernails, length of each finger, overall shape. Her face contorts itself in thought as the details start to change, as her skin and bones reform themselves, as a wedding band appears on the left one, as moles spring out here and there.

Erik just looks on, the pleasurable feeling of swimming receding, a deep ache taking its place. He looks towards the door where their half-unpacked suitcases still stand, gathering dust. He reaches for the bottle again but before he is able to grab at it properly, a pale hand settles on his wrist. He looks back at the girl before him, her features unreadable in the dark.

"Enough." She says in a steady voice. Her mouth is still moving when Erik stops to listen, when he moves to lie on the bed once again, cursing under breath as his elbow bangs at something. He half expects to hear the noise of breaking porcelain. When nothing but Mystique's voice can be heard, he looks briefly to his right, where an old flower vase used to stand. There is nothing there.

Cautiously, so that nausea does not take the better of him, he looks over the edge of the mattress at the floor, where gleaming dark shards lie among a few padded white lilies.  
Strange. Last time he saw the vase whole, there was a blooming bouquet in it.

"Just look at you." Mystique's strangled chuckle brings him out of his thoughts as she tugs at his sleeve not to have him roll off the bed. "Great fearsome Magneto drunk till he can barely see." Her hands are sun-kissed now, freckled and childish in both their size and movements.

"Leave me alone-" he means to growl back but she will have none of it. Two pairs of tired, sad eyes meet when they look back at each other. "Leave me." He says once again, looking away.

Mystique, or Raven, or whatever else she would have him call her, says nothing in return as she slips into the corridor.

Once alone, Erik looks at the ceiling again. He can finally smell the faint rottenness of the lilies. There is a dull ache in his side, just beneath his ribs, as he takes a deep swig from the bottle. And then another and another, and another till his vision swims enough not to notice anything but his immediate surroundings. He looks long and carefully at his own hand, battered and sinewy like an old parchment.

He does not go to sleep before the sun comes out fully, blinding, as it rolls its stray rays directly over the bed and his closed eyes.


	3. Walking

_A/N: watch?v=ZTvhR0lEtZM_

* * *

This particular autumn day is blazing hot.

Sweat is trickling down his temple when Erik goes for a walk, his jeans immaculate and shirt long sleeved. There are kids looking his way every now and then as he swaggers through the ideal American neighbourhood with all of its white fences, apple trees and silky green lawns. Dark glasses obscure his face partially from the narrow eyes of housewives following his silhouette from within the enclosure of their houses.

Raven is at his side, her true colours concealed by elegant paleness and wavy blond hair. Her dress accents every of her curves, its flowery pattern making her look far less menacing than she really is. She ignores him, as she mostly does these days, clacking her heels in resolute silence on the pavement. Their arms are linked at elbows, the wide brim of her summer hat grazing his shoulder with each step.

They will eventually have to see how Charles is doing. This is what Erik says, because what else is there to say.

Raven is silent, her pouty lips tightening when he glances sideways at her.

They go, step by step, under the piercing blue sky with no cloud in sight.

He meant to write Charles countless of times in the beginning, thought of typewriting the letter for him not to recognise the hand-writing, to assume both Raven and him wrote it. Perhaps even assume that it was actually only her who wrote it. But there was never enough time, there was never enough words to convey all he wanted to say, to show all that had to be shown. He asked her a few times if she wanted to do it, if she wanted to start the thing and even do it all herself. But she refused, a hard glint appearing in her eye. And he soon deemed the idea naïve, just like he always assumed Charles to be. Naïve and sweet, and pointless in the long run.

* * *

"Are you angry with me?" Erik mutters after a while, fixing the sleeve of his free arm. She pretends not to have heard, gazing at the gardens, the neighbourhood, anything but him. "Raven?" He takes a deep breath and stops in his track, their joined limbs pushing her to a halt as well. "I said-"

"What." She steps away onto the grass nearby, her arms folded. Her face is flushed, lips trembling ever so slightly as he takes into her. There is that known knot of tangled emotions forming in the pit of his stomach as Erik tries to come nearer, tries to console whatever fear she might share. But Raven is weary, she is skittish, she thinks the way he cannot understand and which she refuses to explain. "What do you want," she looks him up and down with an arched brow, a yellowish glint in her eye he might have missed if he blinked, "o, mighty _Magneto_?"

"Don't call me that in public." Erik looks around quickly, his jaw clenching.

"But that's your new name now, isn't it?" Raven spits out, her face contorting. "And mine's **Mystique**!" She looks at her hands, her manicured nails digging into the palm of her clenched fist. "Does Charles actually know?" Her eyes close for a moment, some of the tension seeming to go away as her shoulders slump down.

"About the name," he glances at her, his voice faltering at next words, "or the visit?"

* * *

Sometimes Erik is reminded just how much growing up together might resonate within a family, even a patch-work one. Raven might be doing it for purpose, she has done it before just to spite him, just to show how much they both miss Charles but know they cannot go back. Her eyes are as blue as an ocean for a brief moment, skin turning translucent white, cheekbones growing more prominent, hair darkening a few shades in the shadow of the hat's brim. Subtle enough not to have the passer-by stare, daring enough to silence him.

Charles is manipulative behind his naïve smile and his sister, no matter how different they might look, no matter how far away she chose to be from him, is still her brother's sister.

* * *

"Don't you dare use your tricks on me," Erik hisses, the trembling of his hands betraying him as he takes a step forward.

"Why" Raven purrs, her face Charles', the mannerism Charles' but the body still belonging to a twenty-year-old girl, the hips still swaying as she giggles, "why would this bother you, hmm?" Hand obscures her reddish, plumper now lips as the dimples of her smile grow. "You should not be bothered by this, _my friend_."

* * *

Charles came when he needed no more saviours, no more waiting for a miracle, no more hoping for a star he knew cannot be plucked from the night-sky. He came and he made him feel something he had not dared to feel for a long time. And now he was gone. Erik went and left him, just as left alone he felt after all the promises, after all the understanding, all the reassurances that there was indeed hope for having the broken pieces mended once again. He felt whole, he felt needed, he felt there was something more to life once again instead of just waiting for the others to accept him.

But now there is reality and no fantasy. There is him, Mystique and others on the same side. He is not alone. He will never be alone again.

* * *

"I always felt you were trouble" Raven sways to and fro on the soles of her shoes, Charles' and yet not Charles' expression hidden as she stares as the ground. "Right the day we all saw you with him" she mutters, her accent mixing and slurring into a deeper voice. "I told the others, keep away from Lensherr, he will be no good."

"You agreed to come with me." He narrows his eyes at her, resting his hands on his hips to stop their shaking. "It was your own choice."

"Was it mine to make?" She looks long and hard at him from under her brows, her whole silhouette tense, as she shoves her hands deep into pockets which were not on her dress before. Her whole attire has changed its look mid-through their talk, from white flowery print to aggressive reddish lines cutting through the fabric in random places, the neckline growing higher and more geometrical than before. Her eyes flash yellow, "Was it, _Magneto_?"

"I will not play your games, Raven" he whispers, the nearest postal box creaking audibly. She tenses upon hearing it, her default human features replacing Charles' lookalikes. "Stop blaming others for your own misfortune." They are nearly the same height as he stands directly opposite her, both of their breaths ghosting over the other's face. Her hair is reddish now, control slipping from her as he looks coolly into her yellowish eyes. He curls his lips with disgust, "You are neither my, nor his responsibility now."

* * *

Neither of them is rings unspoken as Raven takes a step back and stiffly fixes her hat. She later extends her arm for Erik to take in his once again, to keep up the façade of a happy couple on a walk.


	4. Interjection: Remembrance

There is one picture of Charles that he kept. One that was inside the trousers of his costume that one last day.

The boy in the picture is younger, his face smooth with its boyhood and even sweeter and more peach fresh than Erik remembers ever seeing Charles. It has already been weeks since he last saw him, since any of them saw Charles or any other mutants of their old sanctuary.

Erik likes to look at the photograph, thinking of all the vile things Charles would most probably scream at him now, curse at him. He would strangle him or punch him, or do anything more violent, more profound, more theatrical. It is better to think such thoughts than imagine Charles's crying at the sight of him, trying to smile through tears, trying to say things Erik should only be chanting time and time again till the world would end. It is better than to imagine the disappointment in the others' eyes, their disgust at being near someone as tainted as Magneto. As Mystique. As any other person from the Brotherhood.

Erik likes to look at the picture and imagine knowing the boy present in it more than he ever truly got to know Charles. The man said he knew everything about him, everything from the war, the Holocaust, the torture, the death and anger.

Has he seen his shame? The shame imprinted into the very core of his being, the shame of breathing the same air as the never jailed oppressors, the shame of never being able to speak the language with an ease of all the other people, the shame of being different wherever he would go. Has he seen his agony when the city he once loved and whose buildings he played among was demolished while all other capitols grew in power, raising higher than all past paradises combined? Has Charles understood the significance of being able to stand, of being able to eat, of being able to look at him, Charles, as beautiful, as something far away from Erik's reach? Did he see his thoughts concerning him, the fantasies he kept locked under a key of his sub consciousness, the spark he felt grow with each passing day?

Has he seen what happened to men like Erik, what Erik did during the war, what he did in the camp?

Has Charles seen him scavenging for food, digging through corpses' pockets to find anything edible, breaking jaws to find golden teeth to pay for mouldy bread from the transport? Has he seen him emptying suitcase after suitcase, throwing glasses and shoes on one pile, the rest of the loot on the other? Has he seen him telling people they were going to take a shower or staying silent as they screamed and whispered, and begged, and cried as soldiers marched them towards the "new" Red Cross cars? Has he seen him hauling up half-tramped dead babies from within the empty train wagons, the stench of shit and vomit making his eyes water? Has Charles seen him moving his eyes away from an elderly woman, moaning on a pile of corpses, still alive but already deemed dead?

Has Charles seen him moving skeletons that breathed a minute or a second ago, their skin bleached and their eyes, bug-like dead eyes staring right back at him, through his very core, through his very being? Has he seen Erik's knees nearly give up under the weight of the corpses as he hauled them to and fro from a barrow, the others wheezing beside him, never looking at each other, never saying a word?

Has he seen him looking men and women with pink, red, yellow and other triangles on their stripes straight in the eye, seeing the void stare right back at him?

**Has Charles seen it? Has he seen any of this?**

They never spoke about what he actually did see. His confession was teary and well timed, the memories blurry, flooding Erik's mind only when he could not control himself. And he could never control his dreams.

He traces the pale face in the picture, the unruly dark wave of hair, the slightly surprised look as the boy looks at something other than the camera. The book, what book was he reading that summer day the photo was taken?

Erik will never know now. His tattoo has faded over the years, the once angry black numbers now tamed by his own skin. He traces each of the darkish lines, hair like a feather soft cover over ugly marks that replaced his name, his identity, his past and future for a couple of years. A blemish to remember the need to fight, a blemish on his body, soul and mind.

Never again, they say. Never again, they chant.

And neither Erik, nor anyone else, will bow their head again.

* * *

**A/N**

Kinda in emotional harmony with this: watch?v=ybPU6O0UfiU

Picture of Charles described: 2:16 of this video watch?v=oLVjiQhU2EM

**Notes:**

Books everybody needs to read to understand the portrayal better (and see the II World War from the perspective of ordinary people rather than trained soldiers):  
* This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Proszę państwa do gazu) by Tadeusz Borowski  
* A World Apart: The Journal of a Gulag Survivor (Inny świat: zapiski sowieckie) by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński  
* And There Was Love, Too, In The Ghetto (I była miłość w getcie) by Marek Edelman (written down by Paula Sawicka)


	5. Dreaming Again

It's hard to say what memory was the happiest. Erik sometimes catches himself staring through the window, at the busy streets below the flat, full of people and noise, thinking. It was hard to say what memory was the one he should hang onto the most.

Perhaps the one he was not sure whether was a memory at all, maybe a dream instead. When he and Charles drove through the empty country roads, cigarette smoke filing every space, the tweed of his jacket cutting into his neck as Charles sang Elvis songs at the top of his voice, giggling as they sped through the summer day. He remembers the way he gazed at him, the brown hair tousled as Charles banged the rhythm of the song on the windshield, his brows scrunched up in concentration. The air smelled of dried grass and Erik was happy, he was so happy he thought his heart would burst. 

Living with Raven is hard. It's lonely, most of the time. She has a tired face, with eyes rimmed with violet shadows, as she gazes across the table at him. Not saying a word, munching through her cornflakes in her baggy, flannel pajamas, her sad yellow eyes staring through Erik. Most of the time, he stares at the table, fingertips following the circles and lines marring the wooden surface. Sometimes he reads the morning paper, scanning for information about Charles, about the school, about any children needing help. He's not sure what he'd do if he actually found any useful information but it's always worth looking. Perhaps he'd send them to Charles, perhaps he would care for them himself.

Or maybe not, he's bad at caring for people, he has already learnt as much. Pretending to care is better, he tells himself as Raven gulps down milk and he sees from the corner of his eyes that she observes him, watches him like a hawk.

"Do you want to go to the cinema?" She asks suddenly, her red hair glistening in the morning light as she cranes her neck, the bones creaking audibly. Erik looks at her, frozen, with his fingers gripping at the coffee mug, the bitter residue in his mouth coming back onto his palate with acidic aftertaste.

"They are playing that comedy Charles once wanted to see." She folds her arms over the table, her skin rustling as blue scales melt away into tan, dark skin. Her eyes are brown now, with small specks of sunlight in them as she looks at him, dark lock spilling over her immaculate shoulders. "I can buy the tickets."

"Why" Erik says, and he is not sure whom he is actually asking, or if that is a question at all. He feels like having a smoke or a hundred if his lungs could take it, his foot starting to tap an uncontrollable rhythm as Raven picks up her plate and goes to the sink. Her miniskirt is sky blue this time, with delicate white polkadots dancing across the material. Her blouse is white, and her new breasts fill in the V-shaped neckline ideally as she bends over the table across from him, wiping at the wood.

"Why not?" Raven asks, looking at him as if they were miles away and not just across a table from each other, her lips puckered and glossy as Erik feels the bile rise up in his throat.

"I can't." He looks down at his hands, at the white-knuckled grip he has on the cheap porcelain, the cup creaking the same sound as Raven's neck has. She comes behind him, resting her hands across his shoulders and a weary head on top of his. Her hair smells like chamomile and rich perfume, too rich for anything they could actually buy.

"You know you want to, though." She does not touch him, her hands do not ghost over his skin but it already burns and Erik wonders why, just why lying is actually so hard, it should be easier than facing the truth, it should be easier than to say it all out loud than sit there and just sit and sit, and sit like he does every day.

He looks out the window, the window panes of blocks of flats reflecting the sun as it slowly moves up, centimetre by centimetre, and he wonders if he could do the same. Rise, no matter how slowly, but rise all the same, up and up till there was nothing there to stop him, till it was nigh time and he would come crashing down again.

"I'm sorry." He chokes and it hurts, it hurts as the warmth of her embrace sips into him, as they stay there for a while, Raven not saying anything, her weight blending into the chair's as Erik just sits there and sits, with his face in his hands, and God, why does it hurt so much, why does it hurt at all.


End file.
